Why Clowns Are Extremely Frightening?

Jul 05, 2016adminHealthComments Off on Why Clowns Are Extremely Frightening?

With clowns and clown attacks making news headlines all over the world it’s hardly surprising that increasing numbers of people are developing anxiety when clowns.

But before latest phenomenon, a great percentage of people are recognized to have endured from the fear of clowns – or ‘coulrophobia’.

Actually, it’s believed that around 2% of people are afflicted by clown fear, using the ‘ihateclowns’ Facebook page listing almost 500, 000 likes.

How Come Clowns So Frightening?

Possibly the primary reason clowns can be displayed so frightening happens because the clown’s make-up causes it to be impossible to see genuine human emotion.

To be able to feel safe, as sighted people we rely on visual cues, facial expressions especially allow us to to rapidly assess an individual’s character.

Using the clown’s colored face we simply canrrrt do that. The individual is hiding behind the make-up, and if an individual is hiding we may believe that he’s something to cover – possibly even something by no means nice.

Menace Behind the Make-Up

We may believe that there is something dark or sinister lurking behind the make-up – as was the situation using the American mass killer John Wayne Gacey who within the 1970s, outfitted like a clown known as ‘Pogo, wiped out over 35 youthful people. Actually, Gacey is reported to possess stated that like a clown “you will get away with murder”. He did not obviously, since he was performed for his crimes.

The ‘menace behind the make-up’ is one thing the movies have selected on. Heath Ledger’s form of ‘The Joker’ within the Batman movie for instance is made as a clown, which made him appear much more menacing, more unsettling.

Not to mention there’s some lunacy within the clown’s antics, something unpredictable and unmanageable about the subject that may be really unsettling, something which possibly disturbs our feeling of ‘normality’.

The Cultural Factor

There appears to become a cultural element in children’s reaction to clowns, however. Research in the College of Sheffield within the United kingdom, for instance, discovered that most kids disliked as well as feared pictures of clowns.

While Italian researchers discovered that children hospitalized for respiratory system illnesses improved faster after having fun with ‘therapeutic clowns’.

Largest for people’s dislike or anxiety about clowns, the ‘clown attacks’ now striking the news will definitely add, possibly for many years.